Talkmobile £600 bill for 8gb data for my 14yr old

BadBehaviour

Scrounger wrote: »

Not entirely your son's fault if he thought he was using (free) Wi-Fi?

Perhaps you should improve your Wi-Fi coverage (eg install an AP or repeater) to prevent future expensive 'outages'. :eek:

Scrounger

I'd suggest that when at home on Wi-Fi he just disables mobile data. That way he can't use the mobile data connection by mistake.

rob404uk

Dump your provider and go on Tesco as they will cap the monthly bills (Mine is £10 on top of tariff) Very useful when daughter used my 1gb of data in two days when my wifi broke. Might be worth leaving if you get £600 bills with months to spare.

secretmsg

Don't moan and pay the bill, its not network fault so stop wasting thier time and a lesson for u not childs fault.

buglawton

Three has an annoying feature, if you want a quick look at your account via the 3 app you have to turn wifi OFF. Easy to forget to turn it on again.

If you stray into a wifi zone you've used before at a railway station that needs a web login, 3G data cuts off. Fixed by turning wifi off but again so easy to forget to turn back on. Why oh why no "wifi sleep for 10 mins" mode? Smartphones can be so stupid.

forgotmyname

Yeah vodafone is the same, But only for the 1st use of the app or after an update of the app.

After that it will work on wifi.

You can get apps to automate stuff like wifi switches on and off in different locations.
Just been setting up a Sony M2 for someone and that actually popped up on the setup pages. Add a list of all wifi hospots you use and it will enable wifi when your local to them.

bigbaddoctor

Blimey, what a variety of replies. I appreciate the helpful comments and am disappointed by the less than helpful ones.
He has had the phone 2 years, and every single month has been £7.50 bar these two particular nights. So I hardly think I've been overly casual in my allowing him to have a contract.
And the respondent who suggested I had been less than polite to TM is way off. I was and have been totally polite and acknowledge I will have to pay, but merely asked for goodwill in a highly polite manner. I even went to the store at their suggestion, who then said I had wasted a trip, yet remained professional!
I have issue with a possibly faulty phone, poor customer service and not being able to cap a bill if it's continuous use, and their inability to flag up a higher use than normal! 2 nights in 2 years is certainly unusual!
Thanks to all for their helpful, and less than helpful comments!

Kim_13

Have you asked your son what he was doing on the phone on those nights? It seems a very large amount of data to get through in two nights, especially if they were school nights when presumably he'd only have had a few hours free to use his phone.

Has his phone got a consistent 3G signal? Even more unlikely he could have gone through that amount of data with less than that.

I'd definitely look into seeing if the phone had developed a fault. Not sure how, though.

Rev

bigbaddoctor wrote: »

Blimey, what a variety of replies. I appreciate the helpful comments and am disappointed by the less than helpful ones.
He has had the phone 2 years, and every single month has been £7.50 bar these two particular nights. So I hardly think I've been overly casual in my allowing him to have a contract.
And the respondent who suggested I had been less than polite to TM is way off. I was and have been totally polite and acknowledge I will have to pay, but merely asked for goodwill in a highly polite manner. I even went to the store at their suggestion, who then said I had wasted a trip, yet remained professional!
I have issue with a possibly faulty phone, poor customer service and not being able to cap a bill if it's continuous use, and their inability to flag up a higher use than normal! 2 nights in 2 years is certainly unusual!
Thanks to all for their helpful, and less than helpful comments!

It's not unusual for them not to flag up higher than normal use.


Was it in your contract that should usage patterns change dramatically then they would alert you to this? Or is it something you are now thinking they should have done because you've been stung to the tune of £600? Was the contract advertised as capped?


I'm not saying it's your fault. Or your sons. Mistakes happen, phones develop faults etc. and unfortunately you've found out in an expensive manners.


But it's not up to the network to contact you and tell you your usage is high. They're a business. Your usage being high makes them money.


Unless specifically stated in your contract that they would alert you to high usage then when on earth would you think that they should?

Kim_13

Is it not usual for networks to alert you when you've used up most of your allowance? When I was on contract with O2, I got a text from them if I had used 80% of my data allowance in any one month.

albionrovers

kingrulzuk wrote: »

Yes i agree and it makes me laugh that how can anyone be so stupid to trust the kids with a contract phone

==
Nope. Never had any problems with any of my kids. It is. however, rather stupid to make sweeping generalisations.